It would be hard to imagine an art exhibition more relevant to current events, or one more visually and emotionally stirring, than Daughters of China, the stunning show of monumental oil paintings by East Bay-based artist Hung Liu, now at Kala Art Institute in Berkeley through Jan. 20, 2018. Organized by guest curators Peter Selz and Sue Kubly, it was originally presented in 2016 at the American University Museum in Washington, DC.

One of the most prominent Chinese-American painters working in the United States today, Hung Liu was born in Changchun, China in 1948, a year before The People’s Republic of China was established in 1949. Trained as a socialist realist painter and muralist, she lived through Maoist China and personally experienced the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. During the Cultural Revolution, she worked in the fields for four years, while clandestinely making photographs and drawings of what she saw there.

In 1984, already established as a professor in China’s most prestigious art school, Liu came to the United States to attend UC San Diego, where she received her MFA and met her future husband: art critic, writer, curator and former UC Berkeley professor of art theory and criticism Jeff Kelley. The couple moved to the East Bay, and Liu has lived and worked here ever since. In 1990 she joined the art faculty as a tenured professor at Mills College, becoming Professor Emeritus in 2016.

In 2013, the Oakland Museum of California presented Summoning Ghosts: The Art of Hung Liu, a comprehensive survey of Liu’s work that traveled to museums in Kansas City and Palm Springs. In that same year, she had major solo exhibitions at the San Jose Museum of Art and at Mills College. Her significance is more than local, though. Liu’s works have been exhibited nationally and internationally, and are in the collections of SFMOMA, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco, and the Los Angeles County Museum, among others.

Liu’s art has always focused on the condition of women under male-dominated regimes. At a time when women in the US are finally beginning to speak out against patriarchal intimidation and male sexual and psychological assaults in the workplace and elsewhere, the paintings in Daughters of China carry additional freight beyond the already layered meanings they conveyed when Liu made them in 2007.

The series is inspired by Daughters of China, a black-and-white propaganda film made in 1949, the year of the Chinese Communist revolution. Liu, a daughter of China herself, saw this melodramatic, gut-wrenching movie as a child; it made an indelible impression on her. It dramatizes an actual event in 1938, when Chinese nationalists and Communists were united in fighting the invading Japanese army during the the second Sino-Japanese War. Eight Chinese female soldiers, ranging in age from 13 to 28, fought a rear-guard action, enabling the main Chinese forces to escape. Finding themselves cornered with their backs to a river, they chose to carry their wounded and dying into the icy torrent and drown rather than surrender to Japanese troops.

This vision of female heroism and solidarity — women banding together to evade capture by male enemy combatants, choosing instead to confront death in service to a shared, altruistic goal — suffuses the paintings on view. (Liu has compared this scenario, slightly tongue-in-cheek, to the ending of the film Thelma and Louise.) A video showing grainy, blurred excerpts from the original movie, punctuated by Liu’s interventions of dripping pigment and overlays of paint, offers a telling reference.

Liu typically works from old black-and-white photographs, and all the paintings in the show, with two exceptions, are based on stills from the film. Several of their titles — Arise Ye Wretched of the Earth, for instance — are English translations of lyrics from The Internationale.[1] They mostly depict giant closeups of the actors’ faces, expressing intense emotions: anguish, anger, defiance, determination, pain.

No Saviour From on High Delivers II, 2007, shows the head and shoulder of an armed female soldier, apparently carrying a fallen comrade, whose arm is draped diagonally across the soldiers’s chest. Delineated in bold black, gray and white brushstrokes against a blood red background, her expression is both desperate and resolute. The floating red and gray circles (ensō) surrounding her imply enlightenment, or at least awareness and acceptance of the void she faces. Her presence is vivid in this striking composition, but the drips at the base of the canvas suggest that she’s dissolving before our eyes.

Alluding to Liu’s characteristic drips, her style has been described poetically as “weeping realism.” But it’s more complex than that. Socialist realism was a vehicle for Communist propaganda, intended to glorify Communist values, such as the emancipation of the proletariat, using realistic if exaggeratedly heroic imagery. It put a tight straitjacket on individual expression and invention as well as subject matter.

But even as an art student, followed by years working in the fields during the Cultural Revolution, and after, as a professor at a prestigious Chinese art school, Liu found ingenious ways to circumvent and challenge those restrictions. Wanting to explore memory and history, both personal and collective, and to covertly embed social and political critique in her work, she incorporated imagery, themes and techniques from traditional Chinese art and culture into her practice with such subtlety that she eluded censorship and even won acclaim for her public murals.

Liu’s emigration to the US in 1984, at the age of 39, added another dimension to her artistic inquiries. As an adult immigrant who’d already lived half a lifetime in another country, how would she integrate into her art and consciousness her past life in her homeland with her new life in her adopted, vastly different new home?

Like all of her work, Daughters of China reveals Liu’s ongoing investigations into these complicated, rich, often contradictory influences on her personal, artistic and political sensibility and practice. She appropriates both Eastern and Western idioms and makes them uniquely her own. And, as her 1993 self-portrait Avant-Garde (avant garde in both military and artistic senses of that term) implies, she still sees herself as a woman warrior on the front lines of art and life.

The exhibition is a must-see, but it would benefit from more explanatory wall texts, including biographical information on the artist, to help viewers interpret what they’re looking at. Also, the object labels don’t reveal the lenders of these works to the show: an odd omission. A nicely produced catalog from Liu’s American University Museum exhibition, with useful essays and excellent illustrations, is available for sale in the gallery.

[1] ‘The Internationale’ is a 19th C. French left-wing anthem that, with varying lyrics, has been a standard of the socialist movement in many nations ever since. In China, one version served as the de facto anthem of the Communist Party, the national anthem of the Chinese Soviet Republic, and the rallying song of the students and workers at the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests.

[2] According to Wikipedia, in Zen Buddhist calligraphy, ensō is a circle that is hand-drawn in one or two uninhibited brushstrokes to express a moment when the mind is free to let the body create.The ensō symbolizes absolute enlightenment, strength, elegance, the universe, and mu (the void). It is characterized by a minimalism born of Japanese aesthetics.

Robert McCauley's major solo exhibition at the Bainbridge Island Museum of Art will feature over thirty paintings and assemblage works from the 1990s to the present. McCauley (from Mount Vernon) returned from the Midwest in 2008 after a distinguished teaching career. This exhibition includes work borrowed from the Hallie Ford Museum of Art (Willamette University, Salem, OR) and Rockford Art Museum (Rockford, Illinois). American Fiction will travel to Museum of Northwest Art (MoNA) from March 31 through June 10, 2018.

The art world was saddened to hear of the tragic fire in March at Ghost Ship in Oakland. One of our amazing artists, Hung Liu, will contribute to a group exhibit at the Oakland Museum as it honors those artists who died. The 23rd Annual Días de los Muertos exhibit opens Oct. 18 at the Oakland Museum of California. It will feature artwork by Hung Liu, Favianna Rodriguez, Fernando Escartiz and Jet Martinez, plus altars by Bea Carrillo Hocker and Rafael Jesús González and installations by students from the Oakland International High School and Thornhill Elementary School. If you happen to be in Oakland please stop in.

Hung Liu is also included in the Most Influential Artists of the Last Century. She was selected by Dorothy Moss, Smithsonian Curator at the Portrait Gallery. This select group includes Kerry James Marshall, Maria Magdalena Campos Pons, and Hung Liu for more information Click Here.

Forge and Stone: Contemporary California Women Sculptors has brought together seven important California artists in an exhibition that revives our interest and enriches our understanding of the exciting diversity of contemporary sculpture today. These artists bring with them diverse and wide-ranging bodies of work, and long-standing careers as exhibiting artists, with pieces in museum collections throughout the country. As women, they tell new stories while expanding opportunities for artists that will come after them. As sculptors, they invigorate the practice, uphold the legacy of female artist-pioneers, and share a lineage with the unknown creators of works left to us by ancient civilizations, which with good fortune will remain to astonish, nourish, and inspire people for many years to come.

Los Angeles based sculptor Gwynn Murrill is known for her depiction of animals which are simultaneously abstract and figurative representations of each subject. This exhibition highlights the early wood sculptures by Murrill where each form is delicately created to nearly lifelike proportions and allows the artist to explore and reinterpret line and shape.

The 2017 Master Metalsmith is David Secrest, a sculptor and blacksmith well known for his incorporation of textures and patterns in forged iron, fabricated steel and bronze sculptures and furniture. Secrest gained his appreciation of craftsmanship from his experience as a son of a potter and painter, as opposed to through a formal arts education. Living in rural Montana has created an isolated environment for Secrest to experiment and problem solve away from the influence of other mainstream artists. While Secrest’s works may seem to reference a multitude of historic cultural aesthetics, he prefers those references to be abstract. Viewers have the opportunity for an authentic personal experience with the artwork, informed by their own reactions and emotional responses.

We are very excited to announce the release of Theodore's latest book. The book paints the perfect picture of Theodore's life and work.

Born in 1941 in Billings, Montana, painter, sculptor, and rancher Theodore Waddell stands as one of the West’s most celebrated contemporary artists. His paintings and prints of “landscapes with animals” couple abstract expressionist technique with creatures—Black Angus cattle, horses, and bison—that populate the high plains and mountain valleys of today’s ranching West.

Richly illustrated with the artist’s own work, as well as images from his personal archive, Theodore Waddell: My Montana, traces Waddell’s influences, ranging from the Cezannesque works of Montana rancher, painter and teacher Isabelle Johnson to the abstract expressionism of Robert Motherwell, the expressionist figuration of Robert DeNiro Sr., and the classic western paintings of Karl Bodmer, Charles M. Russell, Frederic Remington, Thomas Moran, Joseph Henry Sharp, and Maynard Dixon.

Theodore Waddell: My Montana is published by Drumlummon Institute of Helena, MT, and is distributed by the University of Oklahoma Press.

288 pages, with 185 color and 40 black and white illustrations.

Art Market San Francisco 2017

April 27 -30, 2017

Fort Mason Pavilion - San Francisco, CA • Booth 415

Gail Severn Gallery will once again be in the Bay Area to expose our artist's work to a larger audience. Below are the hours and dates.

DeCordova Sculpture Park and Museum is pleased to announce that photographer Laura McPhee will give the 2017 Paul J. Cronin Memorial Lecture on Thursday, April 20, at 6:30 pm. McPhee, a professor at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design, is known for her stunning large-scale photographs that chronicle how we value and use the landscape. The public is invited to attend this free lecture. Seating is on a first come first serve basis, and RSVPs are requested but not required.

Commenting on the selection, Executive Director John Ravenal observes “Laura’s work speaks to one of today’s most pressing issues—human impact on nature. Her detailed, large-scale images stop us in our tracks with their beauty while also stirring reflection and awareness. We’re excited about her talk and know it will be an important, thought-provoking, and deeply rewarding evening.”

A free public art talk featuring Liu will take place in Room 111 of the UW Visual Arts Building Monday, April 17, from 7-8 p.m. A gallery walk-through of the exhibition “Hung Liu: American Exodus” will occur Tuesday, April 18, from 10:30-11:30 a.m. at the UW Art Museum.

“Hung Liu: American Exodus” presents new work by the artist, well-known for her large-scale paintings based on photographic archives. “American Exodus” is inspired by the Dust Bowl-era photographs by American photographer Dorothea Lange made under the Farm Security Administration in the 1930s.

For Liu, whose photographic references are primarily those of her family or cultural life in China, working from an American photographer’s perspective on a period of great strife in the U.S. fostered universal connections between the struggles of those displaced by political or natural forces and the underlying humanity and dignity that pervade. The exhibition will be on view through Aug. 12.

Hung Liu’s “Stitchers” is among works from “Hung Liu: American Exodus” on view through Saturday, Aug. 12, at the UW Art Museum.

Tacoma Art Museum executive director now at SAAM in Washington D.C.

Smithsonian American Art Museum welcomes Stephanie Stebich as The Margaret and Terry Stent Director. She comes to Washington, DC after a nearly twelve-year tenure as executive director of the Tacoma Art Museum. Stephanie brings a wealth of experience to the directorship of SAAM, having served in leadership roles in major and regional museums across the United States.

Secretary Skorton praised her in an announcement to staff as someone who “has the knowledge, skill, and stellar reputation that will enable her to build upon and extend the museum’s marvelous success in the years ahead.”

Stephanie holds degrees from Columbia University and the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University, where she earned a master’s degree with a focus on early modernism. She has a certificate in nonprofit management from Case Western Reserve University and is a graduate of the Getty Leadership Institute in Los Angeles. Stephanie was a fellow at the Guggenheim Museum and has studied at the University College London. She is fluent in both German and French.

Stephanie has championed the presentation of many groundbreaking exhibitions during her career, has secured major collection gifts, and has a proven record for successful fundraising.

“I am delighted to be the new director of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, which also includes oversight of the recently renovated Renwick Gallery. I have immense respect for my predecessor Betsy Broun. I look forward to celebrating American creativity and sharing the remarkable collections for the enjoyment and understanding of all."

---Stephanie Stebich, The Margaret and Terry Stent Director

Jack Spencer on Charlie Rose

Gallery Artist Jack Spencer talking about his new book featuring over 150 images from his 80,000 mile journey across 48 states.

"This Land; An American Portrait" published by University of Texas Press.

Jarred by the 9/11 attacks, Spencer set out in 2003 "in hopes of making a few 'sketches' of America in order to gain some clarity on what it meant to be living in this nation at this moment in time." Across thirteen years, forty-eight states, and eighty thousand miles of driving, Spencer created a vast, encompassing portrait of the American landscape that is both contemporary and timeless.

The Appleton Museum of Art, College of Central Florida, will exhibit “Hallowed Absurdities: Work by Theodore Waddell” from the Yellowstone Art Museum, Billings, Montana.

Waddell is an accomplished sculptor and printmaker although he is primarily recognized for his uniquely identifiable paintings of the West, rife with wildlife and signature Angus cattle that rise off the canvas through his generous application of oil paint. Examples of his more evocative sculptural works focused on gun culture take center stage in “Hallowed Absurdities.”

Focusing on painting as a space of exploration, Belgian-born American artist Raphaëlle Goethals has worked in encaustic as her signature medium for nearly two decades. Known for her signature layered encaustic and pigment abstractions, Goethals established her own unique and sophisticated vocabulary in the form of distinctive groups of paintings, which evolve concurrently.

Honor laborers past, present and future with vibrant portraits from Hung Liu alongside tools from Santa Cruz County workers and stories by Working for Dignity.

Explore tapestries and mixed media prints by artist Hung Liu— one of the most renowned Chinese artists living in United States today. Raised in China during the Cultural Revolution, Hung Liu creates vibrant portraits that honor workers– shoemakers, soldiers, farmers and more. Based off historical Chinese photographs, Liu’s prints and tapestries (many never seen before) not only celebrate workers (particularly women) but also expand the idea of what it means to “work.” Alongside Liu’s work will be tools from Community members and photos of local day workers from Working For Dignity artists Edward Ramirez and Natalie Alas.

Art and family go hand in hand for the Waddells. Theodore Waddell and his daughter, Arin Waddell, will each show pieces of their work in an exhibition called “Waddell + Waddell” at the Whitney Center for the Arts. Theodore Waddell, who splits his time between Montana and Idaho, works in abstract impressionism, often painting freely-rendered range animals that roam the plains of Montana. His daughter, on the other hand, creates more conceptually-based, highly-rendered images with a twist of humor. Both agree that they could not mimic each other’s painting styles even if they wanted. But while their styles of work contrast, they’ve walked similar paths to become successful artists. Theodore Waddell took a painting a class while attending Eastern Montana College as an undergraduate (now called Montana State University-Billings). He got hooked on painting almost immediately.

“I knew I didn’t want to be alive and not make art,” Waddell said. “That was 58 years ago.”

Waddell received his Master of Fine Arts and taught art at the University of Montana, receiving tenure before moving to the countryside to be a full-time rancher and artist.

Justin Sheely | The Sheridan Press.. Father and daughter artists Theodore Waddell and Arin Waddell pose for a portrait in a gallery at the Whitney Center for the Arts at Sheridan College. The two have works on display in the “Waddell + Waddell”.

Deborah Oropallo

Squarecylinder.com February 2017

By David M. Roth

Since taking up digital painting in the late 1990s, Deborah Oropallo has developed an arsenal of visceral imagery that grabs viewers and leaves them questioning whether her intent to terrorize, enlighten, empower or all three. Where fairy tales once served an equivalent function, Oropallo’s art, which draws on modern and ancient fables, warns of dangers lurking in the darker recesses of the Internet. More recently, with the right-wing takeover of American government, her work has turned pointedly political, all the while retaining the tantalizing visual provocations and post-feminist themes that have elevated her to her present position. All are thrillingly encapsulated in her current show, Bell the Cat.

The title derives from a story that was originally called Belling the Cat. It dates to 1200 has evolved through many variations, but its basic thrust is that of a cautionary tale, warning of spineless political leaders, who, having succumbed to corruption and cronyism, fail to steer clear of imminent and foreseeable dangers. It's a fable that applies well to the present moment.

Tony Foster immerses himself in wild landscapes across the globe to convey the beauty and wonder of these often inaccessible and endangered places. Over the past decade he invited some of the world’s leading scientists, explorers, writers, environmentalists, and mountaineers to nominate the most beautiful wild place they had ever seen. These included:

Foster traveled to each designated area to see if he could share the inspiration of the nominator. The paintings document his experiences on site from the remote jungles of Borneo to desert sands in Chile.

The exhibition presents large-scale oil paintings that are figurative, psychologically imbued, beautifully rendered, and wonderfully sublime by one of the most significant Realist painters of his generation. Bo Bartlett is an American realist with a modernist vision whose multi-layered narrative work falls within the tradition of American realism as defined by artists such as Thomas Eakins and Winslow Homer to Edward Hopper and Andrew Wyeth. Like these artists, Bartlett looks at America's land and people to describe the beauty he finds in everyday life. His paintings celebrate the underlying epic nature of the commonplace and the personal significance of the extraordinary. Of Bartlett’s work, Wyeth wrote, “Bo Bartlett is very American. He is fresh, he’s gifted, and he’s what we need in this country. Bo is one of the very few I feel this strongly about.”

James Pringle Cook is a Kansas native who studied Emporia State and Wichita State Universities. After moving to Arizona to teach, he later began working there full-time as a landscape artist. Cook uses the textured, gestural lines of mid-century Abstract painting to create lush images of the shadows, light, and movement of the various landscapes he explores. Not content with only the traditional subjects of Southwestern landscape, his work finds the monumental beauty in trees, water, urban buildings, and industrial complexes. Cook spends part of each year in the Flint Hills of Eskridge, Kansas, where he uses his family’s old hardware store as a studio space.

Luis González Palma has been selected by the Global Art Affairs Foundation to participate in the 2017 Venice Biennale. This is the third time Gonzáles Palma has been selected to participate in the global art event. The Artist will create new images for an exhibition Personal Structures as part of the Biennale.

A brief history of the Biennale:

The Venice Biennale was born following a resolution from the City Council of 19th April 1893, which proposed the establishment of a “biennial artistic exhibition” to take place in the subsequent year, celebrating the silver anniversary of King Umberto and Margherita of Savoy. The event took place in fact two years later, opening on 30th April 1895.